7.  The applicant was born in 1963.
8.  The applicant was convicted twice of fraud, in 1986 and in 1987.
9.  Until 1992 the applicant lived in the town of Gabrovo. From 27 May 1992 onwards he lived at an address in Sofia.
10. On 26 October 1993 the applicant registered as a sole trader. The applicant did not engage in any business activities until 1995. In 1995, in particular from 20 April to 17 May, on the territory of the town of Varna and in his capacity as a sole trader, the applicant developed a quasi-banking activity by taking loans from individuals with the promise of repaying them at significant levels of interest.
11.  On 17 May 1995 the applicant left Bulgaria and moved to Georgia, where he married a Georgian national in 1997. He has two children.
12.  On an unspecified date in 1995, but after the applicant’s departure from the country, criminal proceedings were instituted against him and an accomplice on charges of large-scale fraud. The applicant was declared wanted for prosecution on 12 June 1995. It is not clear what measures the authorities took to detect the whereabouts of the applicant.
13.  On an unspecified date an indictment was filed at Varna District Court. The proceedings were conducted in the absence of the applicant and his accomplice by virtue of a court decision taken in a hearing of 30 September 1996. As regards the applicant, the proceedings were held in absentia on the grounds of Article 268 § 3(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1974, namely because the accused was outside the country and his address was not known to the authorities (see paragraph 25 below). The applicant was represented by court-appointed counsel.
14.  In a judgment of 28 October 1996 the Varna District Court found the applicant guilty of fraud and sentenced him to a ten-year term of imprisonment. The court held that between 20 April and 25 May 1995 the applicant, with his accomplice, committed fraud in the amount of 108,846,390 old Bulgarian levs (BGL) against 1,740 individuals by means of establishing a company which operated as a “financial pyramid” and accrued large amounts of money through loans from the population. Some of the loans were returned to the people with significant interest, apparently with the aim of gaining popularity and attracting more contributions. The majority of the loans, however, were not returned.
15.  The court based its judgment on witness statements, a number of expert reports, documents and other material evidence. No appeal was lodged against the judgment and it became final on 11 November 1996.
16.  On 19 May 2004 the Varna District Court authorities destroyed the case file.
17.  On 22 October 2004 the applicant was arrested at the Bulgarian border and taken to Kremikovtsi Prison to serve his sentence. On 5 November 2004 he sent a request to the prison governor, asking to be treated as a Georgian national for the duration of his ten-year term of imprisonment. He appears to have assumed that being treated as a Georgian national would facilitate contact with his Georgian family.
18.  On 11 December 2004 the prison governor issued a note which contained an explanation of the reasons for the applicant’s arrest. In reply to a letter from the applicant, apparently inquiring about the reasons for his detention, on 8 March 2005 the prosecutor informed the applicant once more that his detention had been ordered on the grounds that he had received a ten-year prison sentence.
19.  Meanwhile, the applicant began to seek reopening of the proceedings. On 17 February and 8 March 2005 he sent two requests to the Supreme Court of Cassation in this respect. In a letter of 28 March 2005 the Supreme Court of Cassation returned the applicant’s requests. It informed him that the sentence could not be revised because the case file had been destroyed after the expiration of the relevant statutory deadline.
20.  On 4 April the applicant submitted a request that the prosecutor take the initiative to have the criminal proceedings against him reopened. In a letter of 29 April 2005 a prosecutor from the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor’s Office informed the applicant that the case file had been destroyed, and, also that reopening could not be applied in the applicant’s case.
21.  On 1 July 2005 the applicant submitted another request to the Supreme Court of Cassation for reopening and suspension of his sentence. In October 2005 the applicant was informed that the Supreme Court of Cassation had instituted proceedings for reopening and that a hearing had been scheduled for 10 March 2006. In a decision of 13 January 2006, however, the Supreme Court of Cassation terminated those proceedings on the grounds that the case file had been destroyed and a procedure for its restoration would need to be instituted. The court instructed the Varna District Court to launch a procedure for the restoration of the case file. Such a procedure took place between 17 February and 20 June 2006, apparently to no avail.
22.  It appears that on an unspecified date the reopening proceedings were resumed, and on 12 April 2007 the Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed the applicant’s request for reopening and suspension of his sentence as ill-founded. The court held that the provisions requiring reopening of criminal proceedings had been introduced into Bulgarian law on 1 January 2000. Relying on the principle of legal certainty, the court held that reopening was not applicable to trials which had ended before that date. The court went on to state that even assuming applicability the criminal proceedings could not have been resumed, because the case file had been irreversibly destroyed.
23.  Nevertheless the court went into the merits of the request and noted that following the collapse of his financial pyramid the applicant had left Bulgaria and moved to Georgia. During the criminal proceedings against him the applicant lived in Georgia, married there in 1997 and even took his wife’s name. In the court’s view, by doing all of the above the applicant was displaying his intention to abscond. The court held that in 1995 and 1996 a number of sets of criminal proceedings had been opened against individuals who had been engaged in similar activities to those of the applicant. The court assumed that the applicant had certainly known that he was being tried, because that type of trial had received extensive media coverage and had become notorious in the country; in addition, the applicant declared that he had been in contact with Bulgarian officials in Georgia. Thus, the court concluded that by not appearing before the authorities at the time of his trial the applicant had waived his right to participate in the criminal proceedings against him.
24.  The applicant was released from prison on 31 March 2011 after serving six years and five months of his sentence.